Seed Catalogue to Farmstand
This one stores well
You could be eating cucumbers on Christmas
Germination is slow and sparse
This tastes more like a cucumber than a cucumber
You have thirty-seven minutes from maturity to rot
This plant is prolific
You will have more cucumbers than you will have meals
over the course of your entire lifetime
They taste like hot sulfur water
You will point to the round yellow ones and ask
‘What do you do with that?’
I will smile
while I think ‘It’s a cucumber,
What do you want to do with a cucumber?’
If I made a sign that says
‘Great in Salad’
You will pay double and buy twice as much
And maybe they will never leave your fridge
or they will be discarded garnish on the plates
at your next dinner party, a topic of conversation
Or maybe you will eat the cucumber
And maybe I will pay my bills
Or maybe I won’t
All that matters to me is that you
Eat the cucumber
So maybe I will just give it to you
to try
Or maybe I will slice it and hand the slice to you
and watch you push it through your lips,
Free of charge
Jesse Clark, Vernon NJ
This poem was written during a Milkweed poetry workshop where writers are challenged to write a poem in 15 minutes.